Yeah, I'm not too sure how accurate those maps are. I have looked at them before. When I put my "rabbits" on the roof, KDLT only came in at 20% whereas I can move the antenna indoors and get it at 10% in some spots in the basement. Too bad I dont know of anyone else in Larchwood to compare too. ~ColAvsFan

If I remeber correctly, KELO did a multicast last year on Thusday and Friday of the NCAA Men's BB tourney. We usually got to see a HD game and our local game. Anybody have a contact at KELO who can tell us what they are planning this year?

KELO is not actually multicasting. I pulled up their schedule and they are still showing UPN shows on 11.2. So they are just showing us some different games on 11.1 than on analog 11. --- Which is what they stated on their site and I misunderstood.

BVfan, I was meaning any of the Iowa schools (Iowa, IA state, UNI) for an HD viewing since I got today and Fri off of work. But myself, I am a Gopher fan so I would not be rooting for IA state, and I dont really care that Iowa lost . The games I did watch in HD looked absolutely brilliant, alot better, in my mind, than the football HD games. ~ColAvsFan

Why is it when CBS shows a close up in HD that is moving quickly, the background seems to pixelate or get fuzzy? Is it because it is 1080i rather than 720P? I don't notice it on FOX HD.

It's because of that ridiculous UPN subchannel they air which is stealing precious HD bandwidth. At least that's my uneducated opinion. KELO-HD hasn't been the same since they started carrying it. Watching the games last night it was bad, bad, bad.

Originally posted by rmullinLast night's HD game on KELO: was it me or was the picture quite dark?

I too thought that a couple of the games yesterday were darker than others, but I can not remember the specific venue. Seems to me it was the arena that had a lot of blue on th floorl

Just compared NC State/Charolotte game on D* HD and KELOHD. The KELO broadcast does not appear to be darker than the D*. What is noticeable is difference in the sound. D* is in DD 5.1 and the crowd noise makes you feel like you are there.

Originally posted by bighdtvfanWhy is it when CBS shows a close up in HD that is moving quickly, the background seems to pixelate or get fuzzy? Is it because it is 1080i rather than 720P? I don't notice it on FOX HD.

I agree with Husker about KELO looking softer at times than it use to. I think is is more noticeable in some indoor live events and some of the network programs.

I also saw pixelation last night, but I did not watch KELO very much so that may have been a function of what was going on with the network. I also think that sometimes signal strength may affect the quality of a moving obect as I have experienced the same effect on FOX.

I do think the ABC, ESPN, and FOX HD live events look more "3D" if you will, so maybe that is the 720p over the 1080i.

Since most of the HD crews are independents that the network hires, that could also be a variable for quality in the live venues.

I'm of the opinion that it has more to do with 720p vs 1080i broadcasts than the KELO/UPN subchannel. 1080 interlace gives us 180 less lines at a single instant in time than 720p. If you take a look at past threads, about the only time anyone complains about KELO's brodcasts is during sports events. Meanwhile, slow moving CSI looks fantastic. We're comparing apples vs. oranges here...

I'm sure somewhere in this AVS forum there is a topic about pixelation. I'm sure it doesn't happen just in Sioux Falls, however, I will look later. I do know that I have seen it on PBS HD as well. (1080i worse than 720p?)

To rmullin's comment about the picture looking dark, I myself had to turn DOWN the brightness on my screen. My eyes were hurting at the brightness. But for me its easy to hit the picture type button from standard to movie. That solved it for me. ~ColAvsFan

I agree that there are definite flaws in the broadcast stream from KELO-HD, but you can't say it is the difference between 720p and 1080i. In addition to the broadcast signals, I can get HBO-HD from my cable system in 1080i, and there is never that kind of pixelation - even on very fast, bright action scenes.

We are still on the 'bleeding edge' of the HD revolution, and everything is not up to the quality we all desire, and that our HD TVs can produce. As the networks focus more on HD and digital broadcasts, I expect things to improve substantially on the local level.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is.

Originally posted by BryanSDI'm of the opinion that it has more to do with 720p vs 1080i broadcasts than the KELO/UPN subchannel. 1080 interlace gives us 180 less lines at a single instant in time than 720p. If you take a look at past threads, about the only time anyone complains about KELO's brodcasts is during sports events. Meanwhile, slow moving CSI looks fantastic. We're comparing apples vs. oranges here...

The pixelization/macroblocking you see with 1080i isn't an interlace artifact, which would look like NTSC jitter, but rather it's a bandwidth problem - when lots of pixels change on the screen simultaneously (fast motion scenes), there simply isn't enough bandwidth to get all the information down the pipeline. So you get pixelization around the fast-motion areas, or across the entire picture during a fast pan, for example.

720p displays slightly fewer pixels per second, but its real benefit is that it compresses more efficiently under MPEG2, requiring less bandwidth to broadcast, and therefore its picture quality doesn't suffer nearly as much as 1080i. Given sufficient bandwidth, say 19mbits/sec, 1080i sports can look great (HDNet is 1080i, for example), but that doesn't leave any bandwidth for stations that want to add subchannels. So there's a tradeoff for 1080i vs 720p - 1080i offers more resolution, but 720p is smoother for action scenes. I personally prefer 1080i for movie and documentary programs, but I like 720p for sports.

For multicasting TV stations, 720p is a win. The 720p HD signal doesn't suffer much degradation at reduced bandwidth - I think KSFY sends out their 720p at ~12mbits/sec, for instance, and it looks fine. Compare that to KELO's 1080i at ~15mbits/sec, which has lots of artifacts during sporting events despite a higher bitrate.

For multicasting TV stations, 720p is a win. The 720p HD signal doesn't suffer much degradation at reduced bandwidth - I think KSFY sends out their 720p at ~12mbits/sec, for instance, and it looks fine. Compare that to KELO's 1080i at ~15mbits/sec, which has lots of artifacts during sporting events despite a higher bitrate.

But is whatever bitrate KELO is sending out essentially split b/w the 2 subchannels? I don't have any equipment that can check those numbers.

All I know is Monday Night football, for example, on KSFY looks pristine from start to finish...live action, replays, slow motion, etc. CBS football looks really good from the "sideline" cameras that they show the live game action from (better than ABC I would say) but suffers during replays and slowmotion with the blocking/artifacting issues. Watching the NCAA's the past 4 days I'd say basketball suffers worse than football. I think KELO added the UPN sub-channel in Feb of 2004, right after football season when they carried the Super Bowl, but i could be wrong.

Originally posted by HuskerBut is whatever bitrate KELO is sending out essentially split b/w the 2 subchannels? I don't have any equipment that can check those numbers.

All stations start with ~19.4 mbits/sec to work with.

KELO is splitting their bandwidth, with about 15mbits/sec going to CBSHD, and 3.?mbits/sec going to UPN. The rest is audio and overhead.

KSFY is only broadcasting one stream, ABCHD at about 12.2mbits/sec. They're padding the rest of the channel with null packets, essentially.

I agree that for sports, 12mbit 720p looks better than 15mbit 1080i.

For last year's Superbowl on CBS (NE vs Car), KELO shut down their subchannel for the day, giving the CBSHD feed most of the 19mbits/sec. I thought it looked substantially better than their weekly games this past season, or this weekend's NCAA games.

Wife finally got fed up and called KSFY. Last week my wife was complaining because Desparate Housewives wasn't in HD. Then when it started this week the same way, she finally got fed up and called them. 5 minutes later it switched to HD.

Is this someone sleeping at the station? Is there a manual step that someone forgot? Anyway the wife was happy again, and so I was happy again.